Airlines Posts

Capt. Beatty A disinformation campaign falsely links “DEI” to airline accidents – let’s check the facts. By Capt. Jenny Beatty There is no extant literature examining this question, so I accessed various sources to compile available data. I research…

The past decade has not been kind to Boeing. 737 MAX 8 Until 2018, America’s premier aircraft builder appeared extremely successful if money was the only assessment. Boeing also had a solid defense business with billions in military contracts in add…

Note: This story was corrected on August 10th at 10:23 am, thanks to the help of a sharp-eyed reader. Making an ATR-72 Spin I wasn’t in Brazil on Friday afternoon, but I saw the post on Twitter or X (or whatever you call it) showing a Brazil ATR-72…

Continuing my curiosity quest inspired by Can GPS Spoofing Fool a Flight Navigator?, it seems that the US Air Force and Navy are the only reliable sources of air navigator training available today. But in either case, it is not a dedicated aviation …

Beyond worrying about the heating bill and bundling up for the sub-zero trek to the mail box, reports about how much of America has been dealing with the polar waterfall has stimulated an unexpected question: Given the reality that cold weather quic…

Is it coincidence that after decades of shrinking seat pitch (that ever-narrowing gap where your legs are supposed to go in coach), that the airlines have so thoroughly alienated people that they can now shrink coach to expand the space in the front…

Aviation safety, when you get right down to it, is an endless round of risk assessment what ifs. There is much to learn when what ifs become real life right now. If you survive, that is. Another way to learn is from the decisions made by others. Ca…

During the State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden said he wanted to crack down on airline “junk fees” that airlines added to their ticket prices. Given the motivation for the ever expanding menu of these fees, I’m not holding my breath for …

If traveling from stockyard to stockyard on winged cattle cars is a fate just shy of death, drop what your are doing right now and click this link to the Federal Register: Request for Comments in Minimum Seat Dimensions Necessary for Safety of Air P…

When I returned home from the EAA Aviation Museum to start writing this I discovered that today, October 13, 2022, is Ernest K. Gann’s 112th birthday. This is significant because he owned the subject of my photo session, an Olivetti Lettra 22 ultrap…

It’s been slightly more than a year since I’ve flown on an airliner. I certainly didn’t miss airline travel in the middle of the pandemic, but this summer’s cancellation and delay insanity created an avoidance mindset that’s pale by comparison. If m…

Everyone knows airline flying stopped being fun 20 or 30 years ago once a deregulated industry realized just how cheaply they could package and sell their product. Along with searching for a low-price fare these days, we’ve all had to get used to th…

During a bimonthly recon of a used bookstore hoping that some unexpected title would catch my eye, Indestructible: One Man’s Mission That Changed the Course of World War II arrested my scan with the image of a red Beech 18 wearing prewar US red-dott…

Boeing 737 MAX 7 For the thousands of us who call the aviation industry home, 2020 turned out to be a year we’ll be glad to see the end of although the change of calendars won’t wipe away many of this year’s problems. The highly-contagious coronavir…

Aviators live and die by their acronyms, so reading one unfamiliar motivates a frenzy of catch-up research. A short news item about changes ICAO recently made to special procedures for in-flight contingencies in oceanic airspace focused on something…

Nothing in the world seems to make sense anymore. On Monday (September 14), GAMA published its aircraft shipping and billings report for the second quarter, and it’s not good. Every category took a significant hit. The surprise was that piston airpl…

Rarely are the dots so closely connected to an epiphany that turns a train of thought on the future of automated aviation in the opposite direction. SkyDrive The first dot was an August 29 New York Times story, Humans Take a Step Closer to “Flying C…

Like one of Chicago’s other major aerospace companies, Boeing, the town’s hometown airline has had more than its own share of problems, in addition to those gnawing customer service problems that plague the airline. Certainly, many of the issues – …

Concentrating on a short-term goal is natural when facing unpleasant restrictions, but these inconveniences pale in comparison to the long-term consequences. What unites both timeframes is the inescapable reality that as individuals, societies, and …

Bob Crandall retired in 1998 as chairman, president, and CEO of AMR, parent organization to American Airlines and while many people today might not remember his name, they’ll pretty quickly recognize what he created while he was at the helm. Bob Cra…

When things go chronically wrong in aviation, a safety stand down is an efficient and effective treatment because you stop all operations and dissect what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been doing it to ferret out—and fix—the root causes of what’s…

Unless you’ve been a disconnected intraterrestial for the past week or so, you’ve probably seen the memes noting the triple one-week whammy of the change to daylight savings time (for those of you living in states subjected to it), a full moon, and …

During the interviews for a story on avionics interfaces, one source made a passing reference to interface failure of the Boeing 737 Max MCAS (Maneuver Characteristics Augmentation System). The significance of this observation did not resonate until…

Aviation danger zones exist in all phases of flight, and they most often catch people on the ground, especially when another task attenuates their situational awareness. Almost walking into a stationary prop protruding from the Innovation Showcase b…